I’m always looking for a reason to talk about my dog because, well, I’m obsessed with him. I think I can use him to draw a good analogy of the importance of season-long scouting in your soybean fields. Let me put it like this: my dog is a living thing that I care for deeply. As he cannot talk, I am...

Tar spot on corn is here to stay in Illinois. Given that the pathogen that causes tar spot on corn can overwinter in infected residue, once the pathogen is in a field, it is more likely to be problematic in that field in the future. If you’ve been a victim of high incidence and/or severity of corn...

Did you know that more than one-third of the food humans consume depend on pollinators for reproduction, i.e., fruit set? And when talking about flowering plants, three-quarters require pollinator intervention for reproduction.  Granted, I know my audience here is primarily corn and soybean...

It’s never too early to think about plant diseases! There are few sure things in this great wide world of ours. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west, gravity holds us down to the earth, and living things are susceptible to pests and pathogens.  When you put your beans out...

Much of the 2020 crop has just been harvested, but it's never too early to discuss crop diseases in the forecast for 2021.  Did you come here thinking you might actually get some idea of what diseases will prove problematic next year? Good. Am I going to give you specific diseases for which...

The year 2020 has been out-of-the-ordinary, to say the least. Illinois Extension is utilizing web-based program delivery methods on a larger scale than ever, which leads us to one of the very few silver linings of our current circumstances: increased access to programs across the state.  One...

The spring 2020 planting season season is moving right along, and as such, fields all over the state have great corn seedlings up and thriving. With the emergence of the new crop comes all of the concerns and worries that farmers must contend with throughout the growing season. Among those...

Illinois Extension's Commercial Agriculture team has been working to put together a new webinar series targeted towards those in production agriculture in the state of Illinois. With the uncertainty around the likelihood of face-to-face programming for the summer of 2020, the team wanted to work to...

“A ripple effect is a situation in which, like ripples expanding across the water when an object is dropped into it, an effect from an initial state can be followed outwards incrementally”- Wikipedia The agriculture industry (farmers, agribusinesses, etc.) is experiencing a ripple effect. In this...

Planting season is right around the corner! With any hope, things will go much smoother this year than last year (although that's not a very high bar to pass).  Continue to keep an eye on the weather! This includes not only what is going on in your area, but also monitoring the snowpack and...

As a part of a multi-state effort throughout the Midwest, researchers from University of Illinois are looking for participants to partake in a focus group centered around conservation practices within the Flint/Henderson watershed (Mercer, Henry, Henderson, Warren, Knox, and Hancock counties)....

Agriculture is a numbers game now more than any other time in history. Precision agriculture and the integration of technology and location services has given farmers heaps and heaps of data. Don't get me wrong, data are great. But what are you doing with all of those data? Are you able to...

2019 is finally coming to an end, but that does not mean that your opportunities to continue learning about crop management from Extension have to!  There are few different Extension programs for commercial agriculture towards the beginning of the new year to consider attending.  If you...

Needless to say, we have had an extremely atypical growing season in 2019. A prolonged planting window due to relentless rains, with many fields not planted until June, have resulted in many higher-than-average grain moisture levels at harvest. Observing elevated harvest moisture on a widespread...

Hello! My name is Chelsea Harbach and I am the new commercial agriculture Extension educator located at the Northwestern Illinois Research and Demonstration Center outside of Monmouth, Illinois.  I come to you from "out west" in Ames, Iowa where I lived for four years while working on my Ph.D...